When Motörhead’s Frontman Lost Consciousness After Getting Three Consecutive Blowjobs

A sexagenarian waves and smokes peacefully while driving a German tank through a field. It’s Lemmy Kilmister, leader of the band Motörhead and a lovable dummy who makes Julio Iglesias seem like an altar boy and Keith Richards like an Olympic athlete. His collection of Nazi military paraphernalia, a season as a Hendrix roadie, the day they kicked him out of Hawkwind, the time he took a whole bag of tranquilizers and amphetamines so that it wouldn’t be confiscated and they gave him up for dead… all of these and many other excesses appear—with English humor and bad intentions—in his autobiography. Oscar Palmer is the editor of Es Pop, which will finally publish it in Spanish.

Noisey: When did you first read Lemmy’s autobiography?
Oscar Palmer: The original edition is from 2003 and I probably got it shortly after, when the pocket edition came out in England. It was one of the first titles that we wanted to translate into Spanish, but at first we weren’t able to. We tried to get the rights to it on a couple of occasions but we never reached an agreement. Last year we tried again and, look, it’s true that the third time’s the charm.

What went wrong in the previous attempts?
The first time they just weren’t interested in our proposal, I’m not sure if it was because we hadn’t published enough books to appear legitimate to them or something like that. The second time the agent told us that—had it been up to her—she would’ve taken the offer, but Lemmy thought the advance wasn’t enough. This coincided with the launch of Lemmy’s documentary, so maybe he thought the flick added value to the book or that we had approached him like opportunists—who knows.

Good thing you didn’t give up.
They asked for more money than we could afford, but three years later we tried again with the same offer and they said yes. I suppose our insistence got us there, because our catalog had grown and because no one else showed interest. In general, Spanish publishers don’t care about hard rock and metal. It’s unbelievable that books like The Dirt or Lords of Chaos were published for a decade before anyone translated them into Spanish.

Ian Jepson’s illustration is a perfect match.
I’m tired of all these biographies following the same pattern with the same typical photo of the author looking straight at the camera. Ian is a brilliant South African illustrator specialized in rock show posters and he seems like a great dude, very capable of distilling an artist’s personality in a single image. I thought about running the idea by him just to see how that went, and it just turned out that he is a huge Motörhead fan and he immediately agreed to do it.

Are you also a huge Motörhead fan?
I first heard about them because of a cassette a friend gave me. On one side was Ace of Spades and on the other one Ride the Lightning by Metallica. I’ve been following them since then in seasons, so I’m not a die-hard fan in any way, but I do own a lot of their records. I hadn’t listened to them in a while when The World is Yours came out a couple of years ago and they won me over again. That record made me want to try to get the book out again.

It’s full of memorable stories, like the one when he went unconscious after getting three consecutive blowjobs.
That was the day they gave out silver records for Bomber. Lemmy lost consciousness backstage the moment after they played and they had to wake him up so he could go back out and play the encore. According to his own memory, he doesn’t remember the reason. But he told the journalists that he’d gone unconscious because that afternoon he’d gotten three blowjobs.

Or the one about the legend that his blood is so polluted that he can’t donate any.
I don’t think any of the mythical anecdotes are left out: the season he spent as a roadie for Hendrix, getting kicked out of Hawkwind, the time he took a whole bag of tranquilizers mixed with amphetamines so that the cops wouldn’t confiscate it and he ended up in a sort of coma and they gave him up for dead… All the carnage you expect is in the book. It’s narrated with (English) humor and demystification. Lemmy’s very aware that part of Motörhead’s appeal is his character. He recognizes that rock requires a sort of posing, that it’s part of the game. His exact words are: “What the fuck are you doing in this business if you’re not a bit of a poser?”

He’s been able to stay true to the rock ’n’ roller cliché without turning into a parody.
I agree with you. And the secret to that was precisely to remain conscious of his own character and to tackle it with humor, and not take it too seriously. I see them as the true laborers of rock. Lemmy said the failure of “Iron Fist” and “Another Perfect Day” was good in the long run. Had they continued with the success of Ace of Spades and No Sleep Til Hammersmith the group would have imploded.

They would’ve become imbeciles, like all rock stars.
Yeah, they would’ve lost it. They move at a relatively modest sales level, which forces them to continuously tour. One of the things Lemmy confesses in the book is that he charges more royalties from four songs that he wrote for Ozzy than the whole Motörhead catalog. He doesn’t have a millionaire lifestyle. He lives in a relatively small place and his biggest pastime are the slot machines. He doesn’t have a mansion nor does he collect art works like other rock stars who try for more. He hasn’t burned out because he’s soldiered on and stayed in direct contact with his audience.

He might not collect art, but he sure collects military and Nazi paraphernalia.
Curiously he attributes the military paraphernalia to his age. Of course, he was born in 1945 and says that he recalls how regular it was for those who had fought in World War II to hold keepsakes and trophies from Nazi Germany at home.

Until recently his good health was kind of opposite of what you’d expect for someone who mistreats themselves like him. Now he’s a bit shriveled.
Now he seems like he’s been through a lot. I also think that we forget he’s 69 years old. When he started with Motörhead he already had a lot of career. I have friends who have seen him recently and they say that he seems fragile, probably in agreement with his age and lifestyle. However, of course, after all of those years of having seen him like a bull, it’s a bit more shocking.